A July combat training exercise involved a satellite dish-style antenna that "could fire enough electromagnetic energy to fry the satellite 22,000 miles away," reports the Washington Post. But "Instead, the salvo would be more covert — millisecond pulses of energy that would subtly disrupt the satellite's signals, which U.S. military forces were using to communicate in the Pacific Ocean." The goal was to disguise the strike as a garbled connection that could be easily remedied by securing a loose cable or a simple reboot, leaving U.S. service members frustrated without raising their suspicions. [And using less power "would make it harder for the Blue Team to track where the interference was coming from."] This is how the next war could start: invisible shots fired in space on the electromagnetic spectrum that could render U.S. fighter jets and aircraft carriers deaf and blind, unable to communicate. In this case, the "aggressors" targeting the U.S. satellite were not from China or Russia, but rather an elite squadron of U.S. Space Force Guardians mimicking how potential adversaries would act in a conflict that begins in orbit... Involving more than 700 service members and spanning 50 million square miles and six time zones, the training exercise, called Resolute Space, was observed firsthand exclusively by The Washington Post. The article describes leadership at the U.S. Space Force "still honing their mission while jousting with adversaries, such as China, that are moving quickly and conducting combat-like operations in orbit... While the Space Force continues to evolve, many defense analysts and some members of Congress fear the United States has already ceded its dominance in space to China and others." With a budget of just $40 billion, the relatively tiny Space Force makes up just about 4 percent of the Defense Department's budget and less than 1 percent of its personnel. It has more than 15,000 Guardians, which also includes several thousand civilians. By comparison, the Army has nearly 1 million soldiers. The Space Force has been squeezed under the department of the Air Force and struggled to distinguish itself from the other branches... China, Russia and others have demonstrated that they can take out or interfere with the satellites operated by the Pentagon and intelligence agencies that provide the nation's missile warning and tracking, reconnaissance and communications. China in particular has moved rapidly to build an arsenal of space-based weapons... [R]ecently, several of China's satellites have engaged in what Space Force officials have called "dogfighting," jousting with U.S. satellites at high speeds and close ranges.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last week the Guardian reported on "thousands of AI workers contracted for Google through Japanese conglomerate Hitachi's GlobalLogic to rate and moderate the output of Google's AI products, including its flagship chatbot Gemini... and its summaries of search results, AI Overviews." "AI isn't magic; it's a pyramid scheme of human labor," said Adio Dinika, a researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute based in Bremen, Germany. "These raters are the middle rung: invisible, essential and expendable...." Ten of Google's AI trainers the Guardian spoke to said they have grown disillusioned with their jobs because they work in siloes, face tighter and tighter deadlines, and feel they are putting out a product that's not safe for users... In May 2023, a contract worker for Appen submitted a letter to the US Congress that the pace imposed on him and others would make Google Bard, Gemini's predecessor, a "faulty" and "dangerous" product This week Google laid off 200 of those moderating contractors, reports Wired. "These workers, who often are hired because of their specialist knowledge, had to have either a master's or a PhD to join the super rater program, and typically include writers, teachers, and people from creative fields." Workers still at the company claim they are increasingly concerned that they are being set up to replace themselves. According to internal documents viewed by WIRED, GlobalLogic seems to be using these human raters to train the Google AI system that could automatically rate the responses, with the aim of replacing them with AI. At the same time, the company is also finding ways to get rid of current employees as it continues to hire new workers. In July, GlobalLogic made it mandatory for its workers in Austin, Texas, to return to office, according to a notice seen by WIRED... Some contractors attempted to unionize earlier this year but claim those efforts were quashed. Now they allege that the company has retaliated against them. Two workers have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging they were unfairly fired, one due to bringing up wage transparency issues, and the other for advocating for himself and his coworkers. "These individuals are employees of GlobalLogic or their subcontractors, not Alphabet," Courtenay Mencini, a Google spokesperson, said in a statement... "Globally, other AI contract workers are fighting back and organizing for better treatment and pay," the article points out, noting that content moderators from around the world facing similar issues formed the Global Trade Union Alliance of Content Moderators which includes workers from Kenya, Turkey, and Colombia. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader mspohr for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Writing in Communications of the ACM, former Go tech lead Russ Cox warns we need to keep improving defenses of software supply chains, highlighting "promising approaches that should be more widely used" and "areas where more work is needed." There are important steps we can take today, such as adopting software signatures in some form, making sure to scan for known vulnerabilities regularly, and being ready to update and redeploy software when critical new vulnerabilities are found. More development should be shifted to safer languages that make vulnerabilities and attacks less likely. We also need to find ways to fund open source development to make it less susceptible to takeover by the mere offer of free help. Relatively small investments in OpenSSL and XZ development could have prevented both the Heartbleed vulnerability and the XZ attack. Some highlights from the 5,000-word article: Make Builds Reproducible. "The Reproducible Builds project aims to raise awareness of reproducible builds generally, as well as building tools to help progress toward complete reproducibility for all Linux software. The Go project recently arranged for Go itself to be completely reproducible given only the source code... A build for a given target produces the same distribution bits whether you build on Linux or Windows or Mac, whether the build host is X86 or ARM, and so on. Strong reproducibility makes it possible for others to easily verify that the binaries posted for download match the source code..." Prevent Vulnerabilities. "The most secure software dependencies are the ones not used in the first place: Every dependency adds risk... Another good way to prevent vulnerabilities is to use safer programming languages that remove error-prone language features or make them needed less often..." Authenticate Software. ("Cryptographic signatures make it impossible to nefariously alter code between signing and verifying. The only problem left is key distribution...") "The Go checksum database is a real-world example of this approach that protects millions of Go developers. The database holds the SHA256 checksum of every version of every public Go module..." Fund Open Source. [Cox first cites the XKCD cartoon "Dependencies," calling it "a disturbingly accurate assessment of the situation..."] "The XZ attack is the clearest possible demonstration that the problem is not fixed. It was enabled as much by underfunding of open source as by any technical detail." The article also emphasized the importance of finding and fixing vulnerabilities quickly, arguing that software attacks must be made more difficult and expensive. "We use source code downloaded from strangers on the Internet in our most critical applications; almost no one is checking the code.... We all have more work to do."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The search for a place to build a shelter in Manhattan resurfaced New York’s often overlooked history of slavery.

Near Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, the Five Stones coffee shop advertised for a barista a few months ago — and started getting resumes from "people who listed Microsoft and other tech companies," writes the Wall Street Journal: The applicants typically had master's degrees and experience in graphic design or marketing roles, Andrews said — sometimes senior ones. They were applying to jobs at Five Stones that would pay Redmond's minimum wage, $16.66 an hour. Five Stones hasn't yet hired such candidates because the coffee shop gives priority to more traditional entry-level baristas, like high-schoolers... [Microsoft and Amazon] have laid off more than 46,000 employees since 2023, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks workforce reductions. That represents 85% of layoffs by Seattle-area tech companies... As Amazon and Microsoft have made cuts — and other local tech firms including Expedia and Redfin have followed suit — the effects have rippled through Seattle's other business sectors. Weakness in payroll and sales tax contributed to a projected $146 million shortfall in revenue over the next two years. Restaurant and retail spending is down in the business and shopping districts surrounding Amazon's and Microsoft's campuses, with total transactions falling by as much as 7% in some popular areas in the past year, according to data from Square. In the first half of 2025, around 450 restaurants closed in Seattle, or about 16% of its total. "At the halfway point of the year, we've already seen as many closures as we'd usually see in a full year," said Anthony Anton, chief executive officer of the Washington Hospitality Association. Uber driver Juan Prado made six figures in 2021, often shuttling passengers in town for job interviews and doing frequent drop-offs near downtown tech offices. Now, he said, demand is much lower. "There are moments where you can be online, and in certain areas, it shows nothing...." Seattle tech firms are asking for significantly fewer job placements than years ago, said Noelle McDonald, senior vice president at recruiting company Aquent, which counts Amazon and Microsoft as clients. Hiring windows have lengthened and open roles receive around 10 times as many applications. And of course, "Commercial real-estate vacancies stand at a record high as offices built to accommodate a boom sit empty... " While some laid-off employees launched their own startups, "the outlook for many tech workers is dour as companies invest in software tools they can use to streamline teams," the article points out. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella "has said the company is increasingly looking to AI to perform coding and other tasks once done by people," while in June, Amazon "said its workforce would shrink going forward."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Restrictions have made it expensive for Moscow to ship oil by sea. They have also expanded the illicit shipping economy.

Mickey Mouse's first movie Steamboat Willie entered the public domain in 2024. Now one of America's largest personal injury firms is suing Disney, reports the Associated Press, "in an effort to get a ruling that would allow it to use Steamboat Willie in advertisements..." [The law firm said] it had reached out to Disney to make sure the entertainment company wouldn't sue them if they used images from the animated film for their TV and online ads. Disney's lawyers responded by saying they didn't offer legal advice to third parties, according to the lawsuit. Morgan & Morgan said it was filing the lawsuit to get a decision because it otherwise feared being sued by Disney for trademark infringement if it used Steamboat Willie. "Without waiver of any of its rights, Disney will not provide such advice in response to your letter," Disney's attorneys wrote in their letter (adding "Very truly yours..."). A local newscast showed a glimpse of the letter, along with a few seconds of the ad (which ends with Minnie Mouse pulling out a cellphone to call for a lawyer...) Attorney John Morgan tells the newscast that Disney's legal team "is playing cute, and so we're just trying to get a yes or no answer.. They wrote us back a bunch of mumbo-jumbo that made no sense, didn't answer the question. We tried it again, they didn't answer the question..." (The newscast adds that the case isn't expected to go to court for at least a year.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Trump’s 39 percent tariff on Switzerland has forced some companies to consider whether they could produce in the United States while still retaining their Swiss identity.

The gains could help counter Moscow’s narrative that Russian advances are unstoppable and that Kyiv should settle for a peace deal, even if it means giving up territory.

The islands that Charles Darwin made famous have become more accessible. Too accessible, say some residents and researchers, who fear nature is imperiled.

When Meta finally unveiled its newest smart glasses, CEO Mark Zuckerberg "drew more snickers than applause," wrote the New York Times. (Mashable points out a video call failing onstage followed by an unsuccessful recipe demonstration.) Meta chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth later explained the funny reason their demo didn't work, reports TechCrunch, while answering questions on Instagram: "When the chef said, 'Hey, Meta, start Live AI,' it started every single Ray-Ban Meta's Live AI in the building. And there were a lot of people in that building," Bosworth explained. "That obviously didn't happen in rehearsal; we didn't have as many things," he said, referring to the number of glasses that were triggered... The second part of the failure had to do with how Meta had chosen to route the Live AI traffic to its development server to isolate it during the demo. But when it did so, it did this for everyone in the building on the access points, which included all the headsets. "So we DDoS'd ourselves, basically, with that demo," Bosworth added... Meta's dev server wasn't set up to handle the flood of traffic from the other glasses in the building — Meta was only planning for it to handle the demos alone. The issue with the failed WhatsApp call, on the other hand, was the result of a new bug. The smart glasses' display had gone to sleep at the exact moment the call came in, Bosworth said. When Zuckerberg woke the display back up, it didn't show the answer notification to him. The CTO said this was a "race condition" bug... "We've never run into that bug before," Bosworth noted. "That's the first time we'd ever seen it. It's fixed now, and that's a terrible, terrible place for that bug to show up." He stressed that, of course, Meta knows how to handle video calls, and the company was "bummed" about the bug showing up here... "It really was just a demo fail and not, like, a product failure," he said. Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is one of those moments in history.

The overthrow of Nepal’s government is the latest in a series of uprisings among India’s neighbors, creating a political churn that complicates its ties.

A suspect was detained after the shooting at the Sky Meadow Country Club in Nashua left one person dead and several others injured, the police said.

The consumer advocacy nonprofit PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) is now petitioning Microsoft to reconsider pulling support for Windows 10 in 2025, since "as many as 400 million perfectly good computers that can't upgrade to Windows 11 will be thrown out." In a petition addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the group warned the October 14 end of free support could cause "the single biggest jump in junked computers ever, and make it impossible for Microsoft to hit their sustainability goals." About 40% of PCs currently in use can't upgrade to Windows 11, even if users want to... Less than a quarter of electronic waste is recycled, so most of those computers will end up in landfills. Consumer Reports recently also urged Microsoft to not to "strand millions of customers.". And now more groups are also pushing back, according to a post from the blog Windows: Central The Restart Project co-developed the "End of 10" toolkit, which is designed to support Windows 10 users who can't upgrade to Windows 11 after the operating system hits its end-of-support date. They also note that a Paris-based company called Back Market plans to sell Windows 10 laptops refurbished with Ubuntu Linux or ChromeOS Flex. ("We refuse to watch hundreds of millions of perfectly good computers end up in the trash as e-waste," explains their web site.) Back Market's ad promises an "up-to-date, secure operating system — so instead of paying for a new computer you don't need, you can help us give this one a brand new life." Right now Windows 10 holds 71.9% of Microsoft's market share, with Windows 11 at 22.95%, according to figures from StatCounter cited by the blog Windows Central. And HP and Dell "recently indicated that half of the global PCs are still running Windows 10," according to another Windows Central post...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The consumer advocacy nonprofit PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) is now petitioning Microsoft to reconsider pulling support for Windows 10 in 2025, since "as many as 400 million perfectly good computers that can't upgrade to Windows 11 will be thrown out." In a petition addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the group warned the October 14 end of free support could cause "the single biggest jump in junked computers ever, and make it impossible for Microsoft to hit their sustainability goals." About 40% of PCs currently in use can't upgrade to Windows 11, even if users want to... Less than a quarter of electronic waste is recycled, so most of those computers will end up in landfills. Consumer Reports recently also urged Microsoft to not to "strand millions of customers.". And now more groups are also pushing back, according to a post from the blog Windows: Central The Restart Project co-developed the "End of 10" toolkit, which is designed to support Windows 10 users who can't upgrade to Windows 11 after the operating system hits its end-of-support date. They also note that a Paris-based company called Back Market plans to sell Windows 10 laptops refurbished with Ubuntu Linux or ChromeOS Flex. ("We refuse to watch hundreds of millions of perfectly good computers end up in the trash as e-waste," explains their web site.) Back Market's ad promises an "up-to-date, secure operating system — so instead of paying for a new computer you don't need, you can help us give this one a brand new life." Right now Windows 10 holds 71.9% of Microsoft's market share, with Windows 11 at 22.95%, according to figures from StatCounter cited by the blog Windows Central. And HP and Dell "recently indicated that half of the global PCs are still running Windows 10," according to another Windows Central post...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Saturday a steady stream of people, many who had traveled from other cities, made a pilgrimage to Kirk’s Turning Point USA office and the mortuary where his body lay.

An anonymous reader shared this article from the Washington Post: A student taking an online quiz sees a button appear in their Chrome browser: "homework help." Soon, Google's artificial intelligence has read the question on-screen and suggests "choice B" as the answer. The temptation to cheat was suddenly just two clicks away Sept. 2, when Google quietly added a "homework help" button to Chrome, the world's most popular web browser. The button has been appearing automatically on the kinds of course websites used by the majority of American college students and many high-schoolers, too. Pressing it launches Google Lens, a service that reads what's on the page and can provide an "AI Overview" answer to questions — including during tests. Educators I've spoken with are alarmed. Schools including Emory University, the University of Alabama, the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of California at Berkeley have alerted faculty how the button appears in the URL box of course sites and their limited ability to control it. Chrome's cheating tool exemplifies Big Tech's continuing gold rush approach to AI: launch first, consider consequences later and let society clean up the mess. "Google is undermining academic integrity by shoving AI in students' faces during exams," says Ian Linkletter, a librarian at the British Columbia Institute of Technology who first flagged the issue to me. "Google is trying to make instructors give up on regulating AI in their classroom, and it might work. Google Chrome has the market share to change student behavior, and it appears this is the goal." Several days after I contacted Google about the issue, the company told me it had temporarily paused the homework help button — but also didn't commit to keeping it off. "Students have told us they value tools that help them learn and understand things visually, so we're running tests offering an easier way to access Lens while browsing," Google spokesman Craig Ewer said in a statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Trump signed a proclamation on Friday adding a $100,000 fee to visas for skilled foreign workers. Immigration hard-liners have criticized the program for replacing American workers.

His demand came a day after he ousted the federal prosecutor who failed to charge two of his most-reviled adversaries, Letitia James and James B. Comey.